Emotional Response
by PotterPhantomKitten
Summary: In 2012, my emotions first learned of the Pixar film that would become Inside Out. What follows is anticipation, a "hype level" from Joy that the others have to constantly rein in, and the emotions finding deeper connections with Riley and each other. An "Inside Out emotion review" story inspired by Steveles' "An Inside Look At Inside Out".
1. Original Films Incoming!

**A/N: Hi, fellow Insiders (or whatever us Inside Out fans are calling ourselves)! You guys have probably seen Steveles's awesome fic, "An Inside Look At Inside Out". Well, I decided to do a fic of my own where my emotions react to the film including first finding out about it! Thanks Steveles for being cool with me doing this! :)**

 **Also, seeing as I learned about IO before the trailer was released, the fic will start at when I first learned about the film—thank you, TV Tropes!**

 **Disclaimer: Inside Out belongs to Pixar, the original "Inside Look" idea came from Steveles.**

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One fall morning in 2012, the emotions in one author's mind had no idea their perceptions of a certain film company were soon to be flipped on its head.

Fear wasn't entirely sure how many TV Tropes pages they had gone through today, but there were a lot. Another hour-upon-hour trope-based Wiki Walk, where one minute they could be looking up _Avatar the Last Airbender_ and five minutes late find themselves at Spin To Deflect Stuff. At least all five emotions found it somewhat entertaining. And Joy, the hyperactive bouncy ball of the group, clearly was having fun browsing. A more subdued kind of fun than when Fangirl Island was most powered up, but even subdued fun was still fun.

"Okay, why are we looking at _Brave_ 's trope pages?" Anger asked. "That wasn't even one of the best Pixar films!"

"Looking at the Trivia!" Joy exclaimed, shaking her head as if that should be obvious. "Besides, it wasn't too bad after a second watch, right?"

The other emotions looked at one another.

"Yeah."

"Good point."

"The songs were really pretty," Sadness said after a thought.

A yellow memory came up from Long Term, showing the memory of the song _Touch the Sky_ as it was used in said film, projecting through projector and onto the screen before them—a set-up that was collectively termed "the Mind's Eye".

Suddenly, in a movement that caused Fear to yelp and nearly crash into the console in her haste, the _Brave_ memory was knocked out of place by a yellow memory orb that sprung up from the recall tube. As Fear raced to get the sphere that had been knocked away, the new one projecting a scene from _Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone_ , causing Fear to look over in confusion. The screen on the author's Mind's Eye was now obscured by the oft-quoted, "Now, if you two don't mind, I'm going to bed before either of you come up with another clever idea to get us killed! Or worse, expelled!"

"What's that doing here?!" Anger said, his eyes narrowed in a somewhat irritated scowl. "Now whose idea was it to recall a—"

"Oh, me, me!"

The culprit, to no emotion's surprise, was Joy. She was waving her left hand high in the air as if she were in school, the other hand firmly on her part of the console and causing it to light up with a golden light. "That part's always funny!"

Anger groaned. The attention-wandering emotion was precisely the reason the Train of Thought sometimes went wayward when she decided to order daydreams or ideas—and that one time she had wanted to drive the train herself. "But we were looking at the Harry Potter pages earlier, and you bring that memory back now?"

Disgust rolled her eyes, which suddenly widened at seeing a familiar spark in Joy's gaze as she raced to a few buttons near the center of the console. "Joy, please, _don't_ have her do the Goofball Grin!"

But too late, the bright golden emotion, staring at the memory brought up, had already begun pressing a few buttons on the console. The author's mouth turned up at the corners in a silly little smile, and a light laugh followed as the memory played in her mind.

Joy beamed in turn. She loved recalling humorous memories. After all, who couldn't use a good remembrance laugh once in a while? But shen she noticed the disapproving look on Fear's face, and laughed a little herself. "Hey, it's not like anyone can see us, we're just browsing!"

Fear winced as she drummed her fingers a little, her eyes staring at Joy from behind her glasses. At least she had to admit that getting caught with that particular expression of "laughing at random times when there's not anything funny due to something funny that happened earlier coming to mind" wasn't the worst thing that could happen. In fact, this was relatively safe as far as days went. No storms were forecast (she hated storms), and there weren't any major dangers here right now except for potential dehydration, which the purple emotion planned to rectify shortly. Dehydration brought migraines, and those were _always_ bad news.

Anger's face distorted into an irritated growl, addressing Joy. "But you do it at the most random of times even when we're with other people! You bring up a memory and the Goofball Grin happens, and we have to stop before people ask what's so funny!"

"And then embarrassment happens, and in comes rolling in a memory," Sadness added. Luckily, as she gazed over the memory orbs of the day, which were displayed around on shelves that rose like an expansive library, none of them showed such moments of embarrassment.

The red emotion looked a bit irritated at Joy as his hand slid down his face. "Honestly, maybe we ought to just shove that tendency of yours into a core memory and make a new island with it: Random Recollection Island!"

Joy shrugged. "Hey, blame the Mind Workers!"

"Actually, _you_ call up about half those memories," Sadness pointed out.

"More like three-fourths," Disgust added. " _Including_ the ear worms."

Joy turned to her companions with a grin that was pretty similar to the one their human was currently sporting, turning the memory off and sending the orb back down. "Okay, how about we go to the main Pixar page?" She carefully scanned the console for a button that would help encourage their host as they went back to the main page for _Brave_. "Maybe there's an upcoming original movie listed!"

Anger nodded in agreement, glancing once at the Mind Reader paper to look at the new headline: **Please Have Something Original, Pixar!**

"I sure hope there will be," Disgust muttered. "Pixar lost their game after Toy Story 3, we all know that."

"What if Pixar will never make a great film again like that, or Finding Nemo?" Sadness asked as the Pixar page loaded and the author scanned down the page. "They're already starting to go through Sequelitis like Dreamworks!"

"We might not even be able to see it if the world blows up in December!" Fear exclaimed.

"Oh for the love of—the world is NOT going to end!" Anger shouted, sparks beginning to smolder on his head. "It's just the end of a Mayan Age, that's it!"

Joy beamed, feeling actually excited for that day. She then opened her mouth to remind them how she already had a Mayan food party planned for that day (including chocolate, because they loved chocolate and the Aztecs and Mayans were close anyway), but the words faded before she had a chance to say them. Something else on the Pixar web page had caught her attention.

"Hey, hold up a minute!" she exclaimed, one hand in the air again and actually not waving this time as the author scrolled down the list of Pixar's works. Her eyes were glued to the screen. "Originals! We've got upcoming originals, everyone! Tactical excitement incoming!"

"'Tactical excitement'?" Anger groaned. "Please come up with another term! You can't plan excitement!"

"But you can see something that might be exciting and prepare to be excited when you find out more!" Joy only grinned as the other emotions came closer to the console. "Ooh, _The Good Dinosaur_?" she jumped up and down and start clapping her hands, the console partially lighting up with her glow again and sending a new memory orb rolling in. "That sounds cool! We've always loved dinosaurs!"

"And they can even talk to humans?" Sadness asked. "That's—"

"Kinda been done," Disgust said with a shrug, giving her own input. "I just hope it's not too Flintstones-esque."

"The title seems a bit simplistic," Anger pointed out.

Joy's excitement didn't seem to waver much. "Well hey, it's an original, and it has a title, so that's something! The next ones don't have ti..."

But what the trope page said underneath that caused them all to pause, even Joy slowing down in the reading:

 _Pixar has also announced two as-yet untitled projects and one sequel:_

 _The Pixar Film That Takes You Inside the Human Mind: This one is somewhat vague, taking place in the human mind and shows you how the mind does routine tasks, such as remembering a song. Directed by Pete Docter. (2015)_

 _The Pixar Film Set in the World of the Mexican Holiday of Dia de los Muertos: And this one seems to be Exactly What It Says on the Tin, at least until there's more information about it (other than its title) exists. Directed (and announced) by Lee Unkrich._

 _Finding Nemo 2 (2016): Marks the return of Andrew Stanton to the company. As of now, no premise is known._

It was the first of those mentioned that caused the emotions to look at one another in a stunned silence.

"I-Inside the human mind?" Fear stammered, looking a bit unsure. "Do you think that's going to be about the Mind World, like here?" She gulped, her eyes looking so wide that they almost made her glasses appear tiny in comparison.

"I think so," Disgust frowned. "It's Pixar, they're not gonna go the Spongebob route."

"This is gonna be AWESOME!" Joy exclaimed, practically jumping up and down as she pressed buttons on the console, a few more golden-colored memories clinking onto the shelves. She pulled a lever that indicated what she called her "hype level". "A Pixar film that takes place inside the mind? Maybe it'll be like us!"

"I hope not!" Fear squeaked. "I mean, yay, Pixar original," she raised up her two hands in a kind of forced "rah-rah!" motion, "but what if they get things RIGHT?! What if they somehow know everything about us?!"

"It could be like something from that awesome Philosophy of Mind class we took one year," Sadness pointed out. "We didn't get too freaked out then, except for the occasional existential questioning..."

"In fact, I was practically laughing at how much they _didn't_ know," Disgust said with an amused grin. "They spoke of it all in abstract concepts that were more like something from Abstract Thought!"

"That exercise about someone who only saw black and white seeing color for the first time was fun though," Joy pointed out, nudging Fear to try to get her more excited.

Though Fear did remember that class not being too scary in that regard, and in fact fun, she still seemed antsy about Pixar's take on it. "Yeah, but what if Pixar _does_ go the Headquarters-Mind-World way?!" She pressed both her hands together, her gaze looking from up at the scree to down at her feet,

Anger huffed, making sure Fear's jittery fingers didn't touch a console button—no reason for their girl to feel afraid about this. "Look, Fear, I know that the thought may be a little unnerving, but they'll probably have memories be just, I don't know, DVDs or something. Something that gets the memory point across, but _isn't just like us, okay_?"

Fear nodded, but it was a shaky nod.

A sympathetic frown crossed Sadness's face as she went over and took Fear's hands, leading her away from the console so she didn't behave erratically. "Okay, repeat after me: It's only a movie."

Fear winced. "I-It's only a movie."

"Like the MST3K Mantra!" Joy called over, practically bending over backwards and doing a cartwheel. "' _Repeat to yourself 'It's just a film, I should really just relax!_ '"

Fear didn't look too convinced, but the comfort her friends were trying to provide did help a little. She pushed her glasses up and smiled at the same, turning back to the console.

"We'll just have to wait until we find out more about it," Disgust said with a shrug, turning to another aspect of the text they had read. "And that there's that Day of the Dead movie coming up, that sounds like it might be cool. Creepy, but cool..."

Fear nodded again, seeming to come a bit out of her fear-of-Pixar-knowing trance. She actually smiled as she stepped close to the console and lay her fingers on it concerning the film centered around El Dio de Los Muertos, joining the hyperactive Joy. A memory orb, this one primarily gold with a blend of purple in it, rolled into Headquarters to join the rest from that day.

"You know," Anger said, looking at Fear as if she were someone who completely baffled him, "why are you so afraid of so many things, and yet you and Joy tag-team browse the Nightmare Fuel and Fridge Horror pages all the time? That'll just keep you up all night more!"

"Because!" Joy exclaimed, pulling her purple-hued friend close and grinning. "Sometimes it's kind of fun! That's what the Nightmare Interest section of Curiosity Island is for!"

Fear offered a sheepish grin in return before pulling away. While Fear herself was often the one most in charge of the console when it came to a good number of things things (like weather), there were moments like this where Fangirl Island got an extra power boost (with Movie, Gaming, or Story Island in conjunction). And on those days there were moments where it was nearly as if the others couldn't blink without Joy being in a new spot.

Sometimes, those moments were refreshing. And other times they were as annoying as all heck.

But though Joy had more command of the console now on this fun little trope walk, Fear couldn't help have that Mind-Movie crop up in her thoughts. Would the characters look like them, if emotions were covered? Would they know about memory orbs or Personality Islands?

The thought had her shudder slightly. She'd just have to keep an eye out for any future developments on this movie...

But Joy, on the other hand, was filled with anticipation over that, and even the others had to admit they were intrigued as well. Seeing the mind as envisioned by one of the greatest animation companies in the world? How awesome would that be?

She had a feeling that this could be the film that finally pulled Pixar out of their funk. And then they could be forgiven for Cars 2... Maybe.

No, forget that. Even Joy had to agree that Cars 2 sucked.

But whatever this mind-movie was, Joy felt confident it was going to be amazing.

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 **A/N: There we go for the first part! I feel that Inside Out offers this really unique way of being able to give a perspective on things, and how better to go about doing a review fic than from an emotional perspective? :) Next chapter is going to focus on reactions to the character designs and eventually the trailers! Hope you enjoyed!**


	2. An Emotional Teaser

**A/N: Thanks for the reviews! Here we get into the character appearances, and the trailers! :)**

 **Disclaimer: I own me, myself, and my emotions, but I don't own Inside Out.**

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For two years, the memory of the upcoming film stayed, for the most part, buried in Long Term.

Sometimes it would come back, courtesy of Joy, but not often enough to be distracting to the others, or their host.

No, that honor was dominated through the end of 2013 and much of 2014 by _Frozen_. There were moments that Anger just wanted to block out the noise of Joy belting out the chorus of "Let it Go" at the top of her lungs, inviting the others to join with varying degrees of success.

But at the beginning of October of 2014, that began to change.

With the advent of _Frozen_ , the author had discovered a site called Box Office Mojo, and mostly spent time on the _Frozen_ thread... until one day when she and her emotions noticed that a new image and teaser trailer were advertised for a little film called _Inside Out_.

"Hey!" Joy exclaimed, reading the title. "That must be the Pixar film about the mind that was supposed to come out!"

Fear automatically fiddled with her fingers. "This could either be really good or really bad..."

"Well what are we waiting for?" Joy exclaimed. "Let's click it!"

It was then that they went to the first page, and saw that, along with a small description (which mainly gave it was about an 11-year-old girl named Riley) a teaser picture had recently been posted. A picture of the emotions.

The emotions in the author's head just stared. Until Fear broke the silence by screaming.

"They look mostly like us!" She started babbling. "I mean, yeah, that Joy's dress is apple-green with blue flowers, not yellow with lavender stars, and she doesn't wear shoes, and that Fear's a boy and has one hair and doesn't have glasses, b-but... but..."

"That Anger looks _just_ like me!" Anger exclaimed, looking surprised at this sudden shift in his perception of Pixar knowing stuff. Maybe Fear had a point...

As if placated somewhat by Anger breaking her string of words, Fear paused before squinting, raising her glasses closer to her eyes... and she started screaming again. "And JOY'S HOLDING AN ORB!"

On the other hand, the author's Joy looked as if she were in awe, the console primed to light up in gold. "Cool! They got us right, sort of!"

"No, that's not cool, that's bad, that's BAD!" Getting out of her frozen stupor, Fear reached her fingers toward the console.

And Disgust, the only one not staring straight at the picture on the screen, frantically tried to grab the nerve-shaped emotion. "Oh no you don't!"

"I have to!" Fear pleaded, trying to scramble out of the other's grip.

"There's no reason for her to be sca—"

While Disgust had managed to pry Fear away from the console, the force accidentally sent Disgust backward, leading her to press a button on the console. And part of it to light up with green.

The chaos having faded, the emotions froze at the console as their saw their girl blink, the author's voice echoing back to them.

" _That's_ what they look like?" The inhabitants of Headquarters noticed her head tilt slightly to the side. "Well, they're okay, I guess..."

The group of five watched numbly as a new memory rolled onto the shelves of Headquarters. It was primarily yellow, but had a few bits of green mixed in it.

Disgust's eyes grew as wide as dinner plates as she grabbed Fear, who looked as if she had accidentally knocked down a building. "Look what you did!"

"What _I_ did?! _You_ were the one who pressed the console!" Fear exclaimed, trying to defend herself as she glanced at the portion of the construct that harbored a green shade.

" _Only_ because I was trying to stop you from needlessly touching it!" Disgust argued back. She gestured to the gold-and-green orb with an exasperated look on her face. "And now look! She's uncertain about how she's gonna like the movie!"

"What if now she won't look forward to it as much?" Sadness mumbled, looking rather disappointed. "This was Pixar's big chance and now it might be ruined!"

Disgust rolled her eyes, shooting a glare at Fear. "Just when we all were starting to have hope in Pixar, you threaten it for her!"

"Says the one whose color is on the most recent memory orb!" Anger snapped.

"Why you—"

"Guys, guys!" Joy quickly said, running to her friends and trying to quell the bickering emotions by pulling them away from each other. "So there's a bit of hesitation, but we can still be cautiously optimistic, right?"

The others looked at Joy, especially Fear as the yellow emotion took the hand of her purple companion and guided her to press a button. "Cautious optimism, there we go!" She crossed her arms and smiled with satisfaction as a yellow-and-purple sphere joined the others.

Joy looked at Fear. "There, better?"

Fear nodded. "Yeah, yeah, I guess..."

For a moment, with Fear a bit more calm and back at her console spot, there was silence between them.

"Well, there's a trailer on one of the pages!" Joy exclaimed, grinning at the others. "Let's watch it!"

Most of the others voiced their agreement, surprised and let cautiously curious all the same. It took a few seconds and some stares from the others, but eventually Fear managed a nod.

"Maybe this will be as good as Pixar's others!" Joy said hopefully. "I mean, yeah, we don't know much about it yet, but still, we gotta have hiiigh hopes! Oh we've got, hiiigh hopes! We've got—"

"Oh for the love of Pete, Joy," Anger grumbled as they finally got to the trailer. "Stop singing!"

"You're right, sorry, sorry!" Joy said, looking sheepish but still excited.

With a nervous anticipation, the author pressed play.

As the traditional trailer message came up about the preview being approved for "appropriate audiences", Anger turned to Disgust. "You know, they never clarify what an 'appropriate audience'—"

"SHH!" Joy hushed, waving her hand frantically to quiet him.

Music started up, followed by the Disney and Pixar logos.

 _"Okay everybody, it's showtime!"_

 _"Grab shell dude!"_

The light of the projector then spread out to hold more memories, the images cycling through as those familiar Pixar moments popped up on the screen. The console shone brightly, a flood of gold-and-blue memory spheres clinking onto the shelves.

Sadness and Joy were both tearing up, as was their human, from the wave of nostalgia.

 _There are emotions._

A scene from Up flashed across the screen.

"We should rewatch that," Anger mumbled.

"Shh!" Joy exclaimed staring up at the screen and trying to stop the nostalgia tears (failing in doing so)

 _We have all shared._

 _Joy._

Even Fear managed to stifle her unease enough to be marveled. All those happier moments they remembered enjoying so much...

The group couldn't help but share smiles, Joy especially with the biggest grin on her face.

 _Fear._

Seeing Sully freak out from the _Monsters. Inc_. clip drew a few laughs from the emotions, as did the clip from _Brave_. The music, though, wasn't helping keeping Sadness from crying out loud.

"IT'S THE MUSIC!" Fear cried. "IT'S PULLING OUR NOSTALGIA STRINGS!"

 _Anger._

Dory and Frozone's moments of anger drew the most grins of that emotional expression.

" _The Incredibles_ and _Finding Nemo_ are two of the best," Fear dared to say, sniffling.

 _Disgust._

"I thought Ratatouille was... just okay," Disgust said. The pause wasn't because she had to think about how she felt concerning that film—she was just crying too.

Joy didn't bother with the shushing.

 _Sadness._

By then, that did it. Especially getting to the scenes from Monsters. Inc., Brave, and Toy Story, everyone was crying. Anger was trying to hold in his tears, Disgust was reaching for tissues, Fear just stood there with tears falling down her face, Sadness was bawling her eyes out, and Joy had an arm around Sadness, the golden-colored emotion staring with her mouth open, sniffling.

Outside, their girl was crying too. She wiped her nose, her vision blurry with tears as she sniffled. _I've never cried at a teaser trailer before!_ she thought. _If this is just the teaser trailer..._

For a second, the screen cut to black.

 _Ever wonder..._

Shelves of memory spheres appeared on the screen, fading into some being sent up a tube, likely heading to Long Term. Fear stopped wiping her eyes enough to gape at what she was seeing.

"T-They know..." Luckily, it was a whisper. She felt as if crying from the nostalgic part of the trailer had, for the moment, gave her less of a drive to scream about it.

 _Where all those emotions really live_?

"There's Joy!" the real Joy couldn't help but exclaim, the tears fading and a giddy sort of grin beginning to manifest on her face.

 _This summer..._

The scene faded into an image of the Andersen family eating dinner, the girl in the center—who they assumed must be Riley—looking pretty bored. Part of Areosmith's "Sweet Emotion" played.

"Okay that sounds kinda creepy," Fear whispered, giving one button a light tap. "And you know what else is creepy?"

"What?" Disgust hissed as the next words came up on the screen.

 _Meet the little voices inside your head..._

They saw a close up view on Riley, and Fear got her sentence out. "Shelookskindalikeourgirlatthatage!"

"What?"

But they stopped talking as the emotions of Riley appeared on the screen, Joy introducing them one by one.

"They're so like us!" Joy squeed.

"Duh," muttered Disgust.

 _Disney and Pixar present_

As Movie-Joy gave her emotion friends a group hug, Fear gasped, reaching for the console. "THEY HAVE HEADQUARTERS AND PERSONAL—"

Anger nudged her, stopping her talking immediately. "Hush, Nervy!"

The title appeared on the screen, the film's Sadness giving a slight wave before slowly walking away. The final words came up.

 _A major emotion picture._

"That. Was. The best teaser trailer in HISTORY!" Joy exclaimed, throwing her hands up in the air and letting her fingers fly across the console.

"It captured everything great," Disgust added.

"Too great!" Fear squeaked, fighting the urge to touch the console again

"No trailer ever made us cry before," chimed Sadness.

"That was... wow..." Anger shook his head. "That was great... cool..."

Joy pulled the others in for a group hug much like Riley's Joy had done in the trailer. "I declare this the best Pixar film!"

"Let's not get too carried away," Anger said, breaking out of the group hug and turning to Fear. "Now, what were you saying so quickly?"

Fear paused for a moment. "Oh, oh, I remember... I said she looked like our girl." She looked away. "You know, minus some things like glasses..." Her eyes then widened. "WHAT IF THEY—"

Joy covered Fear's mouth. "Hey, relax! It's not exactly the same! We'll just wait until another trailer comes out and see what happens, okay?"

Fear nodded, giving a weak nod. "Okay. But if that Riley likes dinosaurs or something, then I'll start screaming—"

Joy just waved a hand, tickling Fear to try to get a relaxed smile out of her before practically dancing on the console again. "Aw come on, like that's gonna happen!" She nearly started doing cartwheels. "I wish it were next year already!"

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 **A/N: Oh Fear, if only you knew then! XD Yeah, next chapter I plan to include the other major trailers, and then my plans for seeing the film. So, hope you enjoyed this part, and please leave a review! :)**


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